Shot three times, New Orleans chef lives to make himself, school lunch better

NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — Don’t tell anybody.

New Orleans chef Nathanial Zimet hides vegetables.

He secretly stashes them inside his mac-n-cheese.

It’s the job he’s been hired to do says WGNO Good Morning New Orleans features reporter Bill Wood.

Zimet dishes up and delivers lunch to a dozen Louisiana schools.

He choreographs his kitchen crew to assemble midday meals year round for about a thousand kids.

With a culinary education from Le Cordon Bleu in London, Zimet was living his dream until his nightmare.

It was late one Saturday night. The chef had just gotten off work and pulled up in his pickup truck in front of his house.

He saw somebody he did not recognize and says, “He was knocking on the window with a gun, and we exchanged some words, and he shot me.”

The chef was shot not once, not twice, but three times.

A neighbor heard the commotion and called 911.

The chef was on the operating table within an hour and recovering from the surgery that saved his life, his far from fine dining hospital food made him think.

“I realized food needs to be more intentional, nourishing and so, I started to get involved with schools and feed kids and make a difference.” he says.

So, he started making school lunches.

Zimet had to decide, he says, “I realized quickly you either live or you die and I’m not really into dying.”

He’s the New Orleans chef who turned himself and school lunch around.

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